tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43225373730539631722016-12-28T06:21:36.082-05:00Stazz's Stuffthis blog presents no adjunct to the Muses' diademChris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.comBlogger166125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-66813034001612049292014-10-17T20:11:00.001-04:002014-10-17T22:51:33.052-04:00Playlist Parataxis: The Poetics of Shuffle<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2qIbU745eIc/VEGs6tAi_bI/AAAAAAAABCA/ADnzHd-HOeU/s1600/15675966_a03dbed7a6_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2qIbU745eIc/VEGs6tAi_bI/AAAAAAAABCA/ADnzHd-HOeU/s1600/15675966_a03dbed7a6_z.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by Mark Giles<br />Used under CreativeCommons<br />https://flic.kr/p/2okVh</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">I recently purchased a record player. I’m not exactly sure why I purchased it (I’ll forego explanations about the “warmth” of the sound, etc), but part of it, I think, has to do with re-socializing the musical consumption process (<a href="http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/01/resocializing-technology-loss-of-public.html" target="_blank">cf previous post</a>) and a reacquisition of tactility, both of which center on the process of visiting a record store. Another effect of my newfound habit of purchasing records is that I mostly purchase the full albums within which the singles I know well are situated, within their original contexts and juxtapositions—including placement vis-à-vis other songs on the album and their relative position to the “flip,” which I feel is a kind of aural caesura, a dramatic device.&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It would be stating the obvious to point out how digital music (especially the iTunes store) has reiterated the primacy of the “single,” but I do think that there is a risk of losing something by consuming singles <i>as singles</i>. The risk of loss is not some kind of encoded meaning derived from a track existing in its set context within an album; rather, the possibility of loss is the <i>process</i> of creative close listenings necessary to decipher the parataxis of song placement on albums—why are the songs ordered thus? (Definition of poetic parataxis, from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parataxis" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>: "[Parataxis is] used to describe a technique in poetry in which two images or fragments, usually starkly dissimilar images or fragments, are juxtaposed without a clear connection. Readers are then left to make their own connections implied by the paratactic syntax.") Why would this song precede the following song, and how do they relate? The most fascinating thing to me about digital listening is that parataxis is not lost in the primacy of the single in the playlist; it just becomes further listener constructed (decentering the editorial authority of the producer/artist), and intensified by the need for creating more distant relations. The difference is that many people don’t consider these juxtapositions in playlists or shuffles as meaning-making devices—but should.<br /><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">With the rise of critical theories like reader-response theory, questions of meaning moved from that of encoded and intended meaning—why did the artist place the tracks in this order? Can we figure out what he or she meant through a close-listening?—to the listener’s role in constructing meaning—here’s what this track placement means to me… Listening to a record, where the tracks are ordered according to the producers’ wishes, certainly makes one want to ask questions similar to the former, but also lends itself to the latter. In either process, a engagement with parataxis occurs. The listener is forced to make a creative leap with little to no cues with regard to the subordination of tracks or the transitions between them. For example, on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Led Zeppelin I</i>, how does “Good Times, Bad Times” transition into “Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You?” Is it the triumph of the “bad times” over the good, resulting in the subject deciding to abandon the relationship? These are the kinds of questions the track placement in a record begs us to ask. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">One might posit that the vast majority of musical consumption moving to singles rather than full albums obviates the ability to engage in such analyses. But to do so would be mistaken and would forego one of the greatest advantages that modern technology affords to musical interpretation: the ability for listeners to construct their own juxtapositions or to use algorithms in the (somewhat) aleatory making of meaning. In other words, the juxtapositions created in playlists don’t carry any less meaning because they were not placed by an editorial authority. In fact, it’s possible that the decentered construction of the playlist or shuffle gives way to more possibility than preconfigured arrangements. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Let’s say for example, that your shuffle algorithm decides to play Sinatra’s “My Way” before Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” Most would chalk this up to the result of having a variegated musical taste and would listen to the tracks as unrelated singles. An alternative would be to ask the question of what the juxtaposition of these tracks signals. Does Sinatra (via Paul Anka) celebrating the triumph of individualism over attempts to constrain and reduce him (me vs. the world) against Marley’s populist anthem for liberation denote a conflict (individual vs. collective) or an exploration of the same impulse to understand a complex dialectical that takes place daily? Also, what does it say about the arranger of the list to have both of these tracks in his or her library? <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This kind of extreme parataxis and decentering of the editor is nothing new. Consider greatest-hits albums. In these cases, few would ask the questions about juxtapositions suggested here (though, I would argue, should). Too, the forms of relation between individual tracks are evolving constantly. Consider Pandora and other algorithmic forms of Internet radio. These highly mediated orderings of songs need an additional layer of exploration (rendering more opaque their algorithms and determinants to song selection), but also should not be exempted from close-listenings. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">While this brief blog post cannot hope to cover all of the background necessary to fully explore this topic, my hope is to propose that we, from time to time, establish some critical distance to the music we listen to and engage in the creative act of close-listening and thus, meaning-making. We shouldn’t let the fact that musical tracks are called “singles,” a term that derives from their relative lack of editorial context, exempt us from what we might learn from considering them in juxtaposition. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">All of this reminds me of a well-known statement by Emily Dickinson: “Did you ever read one of her Poems backward, because the plunge from the front overturned you? I sometimes (often have, many times) have -- a Something overtakes the Mind—“ <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true" DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99" LatentStyleCount="276"> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">I propose that a Something overtakes the Mind when we listen on shuffle. <o:p></o:p><br /><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/vZ24dnL-U1k" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/10/playlist-parataxis-poetics-of-shuffle.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-26549174133407393432014-04-26T10:42:00.003-04:002014-04-26T11:03:47.888-04:00Glitch is never more than an extension of content: An outtake <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/58/211259480_942461fe51_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://farm1.staticflickr.com/58/211259480_942461fe51_m.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by&nbsp;https://www.flickr.com/photos/speedwaystar/<br />Used under CreativeCommons license</td></tr></tbody></table>As I work on sifting through and segmenting recordings of the poet <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Lindsay.php" target="_blank">Vachel Lindsay</a> for <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/" target="_blank">PennSound</a>, I came across an amusing, if unfortunate, audio error in the recording of Lindsay reading his poem "<a href="http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=73286" target="_blank">How Samson Bore Away the Gates of Gaza</a>." Toward the end of the poem, Lindsay enters into a refrain of sorts that interacts with the biblical story of Samson and Delilah (and perhaps Milton's <i>Samson Agonistes</i>):<br /><br />She cut off his hair,<br />She put out his eyes<br /><br />The recording of Lindsay reading the work, though, well...cuts off on the words "cut off":<br /><br /><a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/~mustazza/lindsay-outtake.mp3" target="_blank">[MP3 link]</a><br /><br />Perhaps one could read/hear this as the recording device allowing us to hear the dead being parallel to Samson's hair: with it, so too goes our power, the power to represent that which is no more. Or we could just call it a kind of funny (in its irony), unfortunate (in the damage to the recording) happenstance.<br /><br />One thing worth noting, though, is that this is one of the first instances (1931) that I know of where we get an interaction (even if unintentional) between the content of recorded poetry and the potential for glitches in the materiality of its medium (its sonic form). The next one that I know about is William Carlos Williams' recording of the "<a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Williams-WC/01_Columbia-Univ_01-09-42/Williams-WC_03_The-Defective-Record_Columbia-Univ_01-09-42.mp3" target="_blank">The Defective Record</a>" (1942), wherein the poem ends in a mimesis of a skipping record.<br /><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/1EXykCEdQmQ" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/04/glitch-is-never-more-than-extension-of.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-40186337181770887072014-03-22T21:37:00.000-04:002014-03-22T21:42:55.192-04:00Charles Reznikoff’s “During the Second World War…” as Objectivist Ars Poetica<div class="MsoNormal">A poem I keep coming back to again and again is Charles Reznikoff’s “<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/243834" target="_blank">During the Second World War, I Was Going Home One Night</a>,”&nbsp;first published in 1969. I first encountered the poem from hearing it in <a href="https://jacket2.org/podcasts/without-house-and-ground-poemtalk-56" target="_blank">PoemTalk #56</a>, and later had the opportunity to study Reznikoff in my poetics seminar. The reason that I find this poem so striking is that it seems like a kind of proto-Language poem, in addition to being an Objectivist ars poetica, despite (or perhaps through) the poem’s narrative structure. Also worth some attention is a critical difference in the way Reznikoff performs the poem and the way it exists on the page. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The poem details two brief encounters between the poem’s subject, the “I” of the poem, and a fruit vendor, during and after WWII. On the surface of the poem, we get a kind of subject-object relationship between the two figures, with the poem’s narrator as subject, and the vendor an object in his field. But looking more closely, it’s not just the poem’s subject trying to comfort a vendor whose son was fighting in the war; the poem unfolds into an intersubjectivity wherein the two men reciprocally provide support for each other. In the second stanza, when the subject returns to the fruit store, he notes, “I found myself once more in that street/and again it was late at night, dark and lonely;” The description of “dark and lonely” is the affect of the subject—not the vendor. We could also read the “again” to imply that not only was it late at night again, but that the subject is feeling dark and lonely and again, i.e. that he was in a similar mood the first time he visited. Pairing this with his upbeat language in the presence of the vendor, and the fact that he returns to the fruit store again, we might deduce that the companionship is bidirectional. In this regard, the poem is different than some of Reznikoff’s other poems, such as “Amelia,” where the poem is framed as a kind of detached observation of a scene. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But the most interesting aspect of the poem, to me, is its function as a commentary on language and the potential shape of the signifier. Reznikoff structures the poem such that the subject is the enthusiastic and more eloquent user of language. “You are sad…What is troubling you?” he first asks the vendor, who replies, in what the subject later describes as a “monotone”: “Yes, I am sad.” The uneven dialogue here, with the vendor speaking in an almost robotic, affectless cadence, implies that the vendor either doesn’t want to talk (because he is sad?) or, alternatively, that language is not his chosen method of communication. We see several other examples of the disparity in language use throughout the poem, including and especially when we learn that the vendor’s son returned from the war unharmed:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">his thin wrinkled face was grim<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">but not particularly sad. “How about your son?” I said.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Did he come back from the war?” “Yes,” he answered.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">“He was not wounded?” “No. He is all right.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">“That’s fine,” I said. “Fine!”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I found interesting here Reznokiff’s use of, and lack thereof, contractions to smooth dialogue. The subject, who is clearly comfortable with language, uses contractions: “That’s fine”; the vendor does not: “He is all right.” Again, this shapes the subject into a dynamic presence and the storeowner into a kind of automaton, an affectless object. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The turn of the poem comes here, when the storeowner responds to the subject’s bonhomie:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He took the bag of apples from my hands and groping inside<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">took out one that had begun to rot<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">and put in a good one instead.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The apple that the vendor gives the subject is itself a non-lingual signifier, a sign that carries all of, if not more than, the affect/expression of the subject’s ebullient discourse. It is language made concrete and material. “Words are things, too,” said Charles Bernstein. It’s also a tangible manifestation of Zukofsky’s famous “rested totality,” in that the apple serves as a perfected, finished object that encapsulates the power of the poem. The apple is an objectivist poem within an objectivist poem--rested totality inside rested totality. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>(Interesting paradox: two contingent totalities.) As such, the poem presents itself as a metapoem. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The dialogue and the poem are completed with the storeowner having the last “word”:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He took the bag of apples from my hands again<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">and took out one of the smaller apples and put in a large one.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The apples are expressive of complex, nuanced feelings, the kind of feelings we generally fumble with language to define, not just tokens of gratitude to the subject. The vendor seems to express more with his statement (and revision) of the apples than the subject does with words, causing the reader to question which of the men is the subject and which is object. In this regard, the poem seems a kind of commentary on the limits of words and the presence of alternative semiotics. Even though the poem doesn’t look anything like a Language poem, I feel like it’s akin to Language poetry in this regard: Reznikoff subtly makes language something real and concrete in a way that causes the reader to ponder the material existence and physical limitations of words. The apple as signifier does not point, in any constant sense, to a fixed signified. We get the sense of the rough direction in which it points, but it resists the transparency that can undo the selfsame function in language. It’s not possible to read straight through the apple to some kind of fixed referent: we must stop and consider it as a material thing, and in doing so, consider how this reference is different than any other, particularly—language.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">(Phono)text <o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It was surprising to hear that in both recordings of Reznikoff reading “During the Second World War…,” one from <a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/Pennsound/authors/Reznikoff/SF-1974/Reznikoff-Charles_35__During-the-Second-World-War__SFState_03-21-74.mp3" target="_blank">1974</a>&nbsp;and one from <a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Reznikoff/05-13-75/Reznikoff-Charles_19_During-the-Second-World-War-I-was-going-home-one-night_05-13-1975.mp3" target="_blank">1975</a>&nbsp;(both available on <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Reznikoff.php" target="_blank">Reznikoff’s PennSound page</a>), he reads an alternative version of this poem, one that amalgamates the two apple exchanges into one.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In both readings of the poem, Reznikoff elides these lines: <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He took the bag of apples from my hands and groping inside<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">took out one that had begun to rot<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">and put in a good one instead.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He then amalgamates the two exchanges into one, reading the final two lines of the poem as:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">He took the bag of apples from my hands and groping inside<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">took out one of the smaller apples and put in a large one.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So we get the first line of the first apple exchange in the text, followed by the last line of the text. Given that he chooses to read the poem the same way in both recordings, there must be some significance here. So the question becomes: why change the poem?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">One guess is that Reznikoff felt that the replacement of the rotting apple was less expressive than corrective. The only way we could see it as expressive is if the vendor was consciously going to sell the subject a rotting apple. That wouldn’t make the vendor as sympathetic as otherwise (though one could make the argument that it makes him a more complex character). Another possibility is that Reznikoff is condensing the two exchanges into one in the spirit of Imagist-Poundian minimalism. Perhaps he felt that the two exchanges compressed into one kinetic expression yielded more force than the repetitive iteration presented in the text. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Personally, I think that the text of the poem creates a much more complex aesthetic. The version as performed makes the apple exchange into a simple show of gratitude; the subject is given a bigger apple as a sign of thanks. I think that the repetition of the process in the text of the poem creates a complex, dialogic exchange and the conversion of a subject-object relationship into an intersubjective encounter. The repeated process of trying to select the right apple to express the giver’s intended feeling mirrors the process of the subject trying to choose the right words—only it lays bare a process that would otherwise be backgrounded, at best, and transparent, at worst. <o:p></o:p></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true" DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99" LatentStyleCount="276"> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div style="mso-element: footnote-list;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/vpprKMH8amw" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/03/charles-reznikoffs-during-second-world.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-25689711542818352002014-03-05T18:36:00.001-05:002014-03-05T18:36:25.977-05:00Poetics Seminar on Sound - 4/7/2014<i>This post is for anyone attending the 4/7/2014 session on sound and poetry in Charles Bernstein's poetic seminar.&nbsp;</i><br /><i><br /></i><br /><hr /><br /><b>Practice with waveforms&nbsp;</b><br /><b><br /></b>I thought it might be a good idea for everyone to get some familiarity with waveforms before the actual session. It seems like SoundCloud is the easiest way to go about this (no need to install any software, we can work on something collaborative, etc). So, to this end, I've uploaded a reading I spend a lot of time thinking about, William Carlos Williams' 1942 reading of "To Elsie." (I have an essay coming out on the context and provenance of this recording, and will post the link if it's out in time for this session.) You can see the recording <a href="https://soundcloud.com/mustazza/williams-wc-06-to-elsie" target="_blank">here</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f1LsAdYgQYc/UxeznxjfDwI/AAAAAAAABAo/MrVUcqgwQvc/s1600/Screen+shot+2014-03-05+at+Mar+5,+6.30.10+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-f1LsAdYgQYc/UxeznxjfDwI/AAAAAAAABAo/MrVUcqgwQvc/s1600/Screen+shot+2014-03-05+at+Mar+5,+6.30.10+PM.png" /></a>SoundCloud will allow you to see the recording in its waveform form. It should be pretty intuitive to look at--the x-axis is time and the y-axis is intensity/volume. This is the visualization that most people use when they edit audio (though audio tools will let you zoom in and out, etc.). &nbsp;This image is a screenshot from <a href="http://audacity.sourceforge.net/" target="_blank">Audacity</a>, a fantastic and free audio editing tool.<br /><br />It would be great if everyone could take a look at the recording, but for the intrepid souls amongst you, please do consider creating a SoundCloud account and commenting within the recording. Instructions on commenting are available <a href="http://help.soundcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/692246-how-do-comments-work-" target="_blank">here</a>. I dropped in a couple of annotations, which will pop up when the player gets to the segment of the recording where I've appended them. If you'd like to add some comments (which I hope you will), it might be a good idea to focus on the sound of the recording. For example, how do the expressive properties of the sound (pitch, volume, prosody, tempo, etc) at any given point interact with the <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/to-elsie.html" target="_blank">form</a> and the content of the poem?<br /><br />If anyone is interested, <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/library/protected/Mustazza-Chris_Phonotextual-Method.pdf" target="_blank">here</a> is a copy of my seminar paper from my Fall 2013 poetics seminar, where I work toward a phonotextual analysis of this poem. It's still very rough, but I hope to build upon it this term. Any comments very welcome! The paper goes beyond waveforms to spectrograms and musical notation, but I think it gives a decent overview of some of the phonotextual considerations.<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/ES4-152-f1o" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/03/poetics-seminar-on-sound-472014.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-74237929026201177082014-02-28T18:38:00.001-05:002014-02-28T18:41:50.918-05:00"Breath" and Depth: Distinguishing between dramatic pauses and breath pauses in poetry performance<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>308</o:Words> <o:Characters>1757</o:Characters> <o:Company>University of Pennsylvania</o:Company> <o:Lines>14</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>3</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>2157</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">One of the topics I’ve been interested in for a while is how a poet “phrases” his or her poems when performed. Where does the poet pause when reading, and how does the pause interact with the sonic expectations set forth by the visual form of the printed poem? I think of these phrases, as delimited by pauses, to be manifestations of Pound’s famous dictum, “ to compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.” I think that this distinction between sonic phrasing and visual form—both lineation/spacing and grammatical/syntactical form—is crucial. Many times, when hearing a poet read, the performance will roughly align with the sonic expectations created by the printed poem. But in many other cases, it will not. And herein do we get to consider the phonotextual relation of the poem as sounded entity to its existence in print. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I wrote a seminar paper on this topic for my poetics seminar with <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Perelman.php" target="_blank">Bob Perelman</a>. To write the paper, I used digital audio tools, paired with close listening, to meticulously parse <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.php" target="_blank">four performances of WilliamCarlos Williams reading “To Elsie”</a> into aural phrases. Afterwards, I compared the commonalities in the way Williams phrased the poem in performance against the text of the poem, looking for aural-textual agreements and disagreements. As I was discussing the paper with <a href="https://jacket2.org/content/alfilreis" target="_blank">Al Filreis</a>, he asked me whether the pauses could be just breath pauses, rather than dramatic devices. I’ll spare you any anticlimactic disappointment by telling you now that this blog post does not/cannot answer that question! But what some new techniques I learned recently helped me make some progress in considering the question. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Using ARLO (Adaptive Recognition with Layered Optimization), a cutting-edge digital audio tool developed through the <a href="http://blogs.ischool.utexas.edu/hipstas/" target="_blank">HiPSTAS (HighPerformance Sound Technologies for Access and Scholarship)</a> initiative, I sought to expose facets of the pauses delimiting the aural phrases I heard, facets difficult to hear with the human ear alone. Here’s a spetrogram of Williams reading the first few lines of “To Elsie” in 1942:</div><!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nAvkJlii83g/UxEUeKGFx4I/AAAAAAAABAE/oKWNp0nyWhM/s1600/Screen+shot+2014-02-28+at+Feb+28,+5.35.59+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nAvkJlii83g/UxEUeKGFx4I/AAAAAAAABAE/oKWNp0nyWhM/s1600/Screen+shot+2014-02-28+at+Feb+28,+5.35.59+PM.png" height="184" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />In the spetrogram, we see clearly delimited phrases of speech. The first, the one to the far left, is Williams reading "The pure products of America/go crazy--" After a defined pause, we see the second phrase, "<span style="background-color: white;">mountain folk from Kentucky//</span>or the ribbed north end/of Jersey/" Finally, after the second pause, is the third and right-most phrase: "with its isolate lakes and/valleys,"<br /><br />By listening to the recording, and even by looking at this sophisticated visual representation of the poem, these look like cleanly carved out phrases, with no sound occurring in between. But let's turn up the "gain" in ARLO to amplify the visual representation of the sound. In other words, we will create a new visualization that renders perceptible very quiet sounds that are difficult, if at all possible, to hear with the ear alone.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LlNxUenCT0A/UxEW8hR7QbI/AAAAAAAABAQ/8KuMoMn-5sk/s1600/Screen+shot+2014-02-28+at+Feb+28,+6.06.47+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LlNxUenCT0A/UxEW8hR7QbI/AAAAAAAABAQ/8KuMoMn-5sk/s1600/Screen+shot+2014-02-28+at+Feb+28,+6.06.47+PM.png" height="184" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We can now see a sonic phenomenon that was not present in our first spectrogram-- (faintly) circled in red here. These are visualizations of the sound of Williams taking a breath. Under amplification, they become visible. In fact, when you listening again, you can almost hear the first breath.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So this brings us back to the question Al posed me: are these pauses just breath pauses? Maybe. But it's worth asking the question: is there a pause because of a breath or is there is breath because of a pause? Can we determine a causation, or can we merely claim correlation? Is it possible that, like in musical vocal performances, Williams takes his breaths strategically to fall within "rests" in his composition?&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I'm not sure that there is a way to answer this definitively, but perhaps one approach would be to consider the length of the pauses. Do there exist short pauses, which are functional, just to take a breath, vs. longer pauses of a more standard length that denote aesthetic choices? If the latter, can we start to consider the visualization of these poems a kind of musical score, thinking of sound in terms of pitch and duration, "notes" and absence thereof ("rests"?), phrasing and syncopation?&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In <a href="http://jacket2.org/commentary/anti-finality-visualization-poems-sound" target="_blank">Al's post on using ARLO</a>, he references Louis Zukofsky's famous integral for locating poetry, a calculus, I think, that technology constantly serves to reify:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">music</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #191919; font-family: 'Lucida Grande', Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">∫</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">speech</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/dlwWH4xpZko" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/02/breath-and-depth-distinguishing-between.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-67458326822145642002014-02-09T20:56:00.000-05:002014-02-09T20:56:31.198-05:00Man A Know I: An Aural Deformance of Robert Creeley's "I Know A Man"<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/images/Creeley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/images/Creeley.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Creeley, image from PennSound<br />http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Creeley.php</td></tr></tbody></table>After reading Jerome McGann and Lisa Samuels' groundbreaking essay on <a href="http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/jjm2f/old/deform.html" target="_blank">deformance</a>, I was moved to create a deformance of my own. I wanted to work with a sound file, rather than text, to start, because I haven't seen many aural poetic deformances. Creeley seemed like a natural place to start, due to his reading style. If you haven't heard Creeley read, <a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Creeley.php" target="_blank">you really should</a>. His style of reading is quite different than others in that he reads a poem in the way that it looks. In other words, he places a slight pause at the end of every line--he does not read through the enjambment. In this way, he interprets quite literally Charles Olson's concept of the typewriter as compositional device, as a tool to create a musical score through spacing and lineation. As such, it was not difficult to segment the recording into lines, audio chunks that mirror the textual lineation of the poem. I started with his well-known poem "I Know A Man," from his <a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Creeley/Harvard_10-27-66/Creeley-Robert_18_I-Know-a-Man_Harvard-10-27-66.mp3" target="_blank">October, 1966 reading, available in PennSound</a>. After breaking recording into "lines," I take Emily Dickinson's advice, as relayed by McGann and Samuels, to read a poem backwards, because "a Something overtakes the Mind --" when one does so. So I created a deformance by sewing the individual lines of "I Know A Man" back together backwards, available here:<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/133697833&amp;color=ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe> <br /><br /><b>Some thoughts on the poem</b><br /><br />I think that this poem dichotomizes learning through language and haptic learning. The poem's speaker seeks to address the problem of the surrounding darkness through language and expression, wrought through a kind of solipsism. His self-centeredness is displayed through addressing his interlocutor with an incorrect name and the repetition of "I" in the first stanza--and indeed the I as the first word and subject of the poem's title, a subject that operates epistemologically on a generic object, "A Man." This generic and marginalized man, whose name is not John, ultimately gives potentially lifesaving advice:<br /><br />drive, he sd, for <br />christ’s sake, look <br />out where yr going.<br /><br />In other words, grasp (literally, in terms of the steering wheel) the here and now if you want to avoid an immediate darkness. Do--do not say.<br /><br />The ineffectualness of language (rather than action) to address the encroaching void is best shown through the abbreviations Creeley uses: "sd" for "said" and "yr" for "you're." I interpreted these to be reductive poetic devices to show that a word can have a patina of meaning, the form of efficacy, but be hollow and decentered. The outer bounds of "said" are present, but the word has been excoriated. This, to me, connotes a doubt in the efficacy of speech over action. It also parallels the use of language with the speaker's pseudo-solipsistic (or at least self-centered) views. Note too that the main verb of the poem, "drive" is not abbreviated. Related, the subject's interlocutor enacts the content of the poem through the inverse of the subject's actions: when he speaks all of his words appear in full, with the exception if "sd" and "you're." The latter case seems to me to act against the subject's self-centeredness by reducing the subject through the reduction of the contraction (the contraction of the contraction?).<br /><br />All in all, I think the poem is meant to be a playful reminder that, while intellectualism is important, it cannot function outside some form of practicality.<br /><br /><b>On the deformance of the poem</b><br /><b><br /></b>Given that this is one of Creeley's best-known poems, I thought that it could benefit from a deformance, in order to allow those who've read/heard it many times a fresh look at it. As noted in the <a href="https://jacket2.org/podcasts/because-i-am-always-talking-poemtalk-16" target="_blank">PoemTalk on "I Know A Man,"</a> a key feature of the phonotext is the wavering, sometimes-tremulous, voice Creeley uses to perform it. I think that the hesitance, perhaps trepidation, expressed by the performance serves as a counterbalance to the strong egotistical tone connoted by the speaker's choice of words. In other words, it creates an interesting form-content disjuncture. The solidification of the voice when it considers buying "a goddamn big car," comes more into tune with the content, as it's likely that this sentiment is one of defiance. The tone hardens and becomes resolute as the subject considers whether a commercialistic act of resistance is the right action if the face of the daunting void. So, to me, the performance of the poem interacts well with the content--the hollowed out "said" ("sd") performed without the resoluteness of performance that one might expect from the text alone, a hollow egotism.<br /><br />The deformance of the poem is quite paratactical. It does not flow together logically, like the originally ordered poem, but this is the point of a deformance--to defamiliarize. To me, the deformance connotes a stammering, stuttering attempt at saying (sy-ing?) something. It's like the speaker wants to tell us something badly, but words themselves are failing. It's in action, in the physical action of speaking, that the speaker communicates to us. We somehow feel what he means: that there is something great that needs to be addressed, but cannot be sd. It's through the act of his trying to say it that it can be addressed.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/EEqn1HDTKcQ" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/02/man-know-i-aural-deformance-of-robert.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-25465652764501339192014-02-05T17:53:00.001-05:002014-02-05T18:05:39.784-05:00Re-Rhythm: Jerome McGann's Modern Reading of Poe's "Annabel Lee"<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt;">The Brain, within its Groove</span><br /><span style="border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Runs evenly—and true—</span><br /><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">But let a Splinter swerve—</span><br /><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">'Twere easier for You—</span><br /><br /><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">To put a Current back—</span><br /><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">When Floods have slit the Hills—</span><br /><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And scooped a Turnpike for Themselves—</span><br /><span style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And trodden out the Mills—&nbsp;</span></span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="border: 0px; font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Emily Dickinson, Poem 556</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">I was moved to write about the phonotextual experience created by reading the text of Poe’s “Annabel Lee” while listening to&nbsp;<a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/McGann-Poe.php" target="_blank">Jerome McGann perform the poem</a>. Looking at the <a href="http://www.eapoe.org/works/poems/annabela.htm" target="_blank">text of the poem</a>&nbsp;(this version of the text is not the exact version McGann reads, but it's close), it begs to be read in a lyric fashion, reading through the enjambment and either placing a stress on the rhymed words or injecting a slight caesura after to highlight the rhymes and rhythmic qualities of the poem. In doing so, the result would be the regular, metrical sound expected from lyric poetry. But McGann denies us our sonic expectations through his disruptive reading of the poem, and in doing so, liberates the poem from its metrical bounds, achieving the “elevation” of the reader’s perception Poe speaks about in his poetics.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Edgar_Allan_Poe_2_retouched_and_transparent_bg.png/360px-Edgar_Allan_Poe_2_retouched_and_transparent_bg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Edgar_Allan_Poe_2_retouched_and_transparent_bg.png/360px-Edgar_Allan_Poe_2_retouched_and_transparent_bg.png" height="320" width="240" /></a></div><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In “<a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/POE/poetic.html" target="_blank">The Poetic Principle</a>,” Poe speaks about the “rhythmical creation of beauty.” But McGann shows us that another aesthetic layer can be created by the negation of rhythm, especially when there is a rhythmic expectation. Indeed, the idea of “rhythm” functions on the faculties of memory and pattern recognition. By storing in short-term memory what was heard and forecasting what will be heard, the brain settles into a dually retrospective and prospective “groove,” pun intended. In addition, the Dickinsonian connotation--“The Brain, within its Groove”—holds, as McGann’s difficult-to-anticipate (anti-)rhythm serves as the “splinter” to derail our expectations.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Listening to the first stanza of “Annabel Lee” read by McGann, without viewing Poe's text, we might construct a libretto of the stanza that looks like this:</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">It was many<br />and<br />many a year ago,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">in a kingdom<br />by the sea,</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">that a maiden lived whom<br />you may know<br />by the name of<br />Annabel<br />Lee; —</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">And<br />this maiden she lived with no other thought<br />Than to love and be loved by me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Of course, visually, this looks like a modernist construction, perhaps something from William Carlos Williams, certainly not like Poe’s lyric. The alternate lineation derived from the aural qualities of the reading shows modernist aesthetics of composition being used to “make it new,” to revivify a well-known poem through a sort of deformance. By denying the reader the expected sound of the poem, not only is something new created, but the reader is provided new insights into the content of the original by a disruptive, aural reordering, indeed a performative example of McGann and Samuels’ concept of deformance.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In addition to acting as the “splinter” that disrupts the brain within its rhythmical groove, McGann’s performance pulls against other dimensions of the poem’s form, including grammatical syntax and the chosen lineation. It creates a visualization (if it were transcribed as above) with irregular line lengths and lineation placed to disrupt the syntactical properties of the text. For example, the line break after the first “many” is highly unexpected, both sonically and grammatically. It serves to create an expectation of a following noun object—it was many…?—but leads to the lone “and’” which in turn leads to&nbsp; the rest of the introductory phrase that stands alone as its own stanza. The pace of the poem is dramatically (both in terms of degree and as a dramatic rhetorical device) slowed to create a visual, derived from the aural, pull.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">As McGann’s reading progresses, a new order emerges. The listener can perceive repetitions in the way McGann reads the poem that are not present in the text, but become nonetheless expected in their irregular regularity. For example, the listener begins to expect McGann to pause slightly between “Annabel” and “Lee,” every time the name is read. While at first this functioned against the visual aspects and expected rhythmical properties of the poem, it itself becomes regular and creates a new expectation. While the listener experiences the phonotext, he or she comes to foresee more of the coming rhythm, alternative to, though contingent upon, Poe’s written rhythm.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Poe’s poetics do seem to mesh well with the aesthetic theories of McGann. From Poe’s thoughts on alternative ways to read&nbsp;<i>Paradise Lost</i>&nbsp;prefiguring McGann’s theory of deformance through their alternate-but-related applications of the creation of beauty through rhythm, the two figures seem complementary. One of the most fascinating aspects of Poe’s poetics, to me, is in the "<a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/poe/composition.html" target="_blank">Philosophy of Composition</a>," where he suggests that a poet should consider the refrain of a poem early in its composition and also strive for universal appeal. In musical terms, this mirrors compositional advice on how to write a pop song: write the chorus first. I mean this not to be derogatory (the comparison to pop music). Indeed, most pop songs are fantastically well written songs—it’s in the jejune musical production where they become adulterated. Because the musical arrangements strive so hard to evoke and illustrate the content of the song, they become mono-dimensional and uninteresting (admittedly subjective). McGann’s “cover” of Poe serves to revitalize it in the way a reinterpretation of a song can, by using a complex production to pull against the content and expected form--and create originality through the disjuncture. Through his irregular cadence, tight range of pitch that resists an overly expressive application of tone, and judicious use of emphasis, McGann makes it impossible to put the Current back again and hear the poem as a lyric.<br /><br />For more on McGann, see:<br />- <a href="https://jacket2.org/podcasts/ill-angelic-poetics-poemtalk-48" target="_blank">PoemTalk 48: Ill, Angelic Poetics</a><br />- <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/McGann.php" target="_blank">McGann's PennSound author page</a><br />- <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/McGann-Poe.php" target="_blank">McGann reading Poe</a></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/LnfiZts_uaA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/02/re-rhythm-jerome-mcganns-modern-reading.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-36155380985670630752014-01-27T06:48:00.000-05:002014-01-27T06:48:02.859-05:00Aural Dialectics: On Allen Ginsberg’s Musical Rendition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience <div class="MsoNormal">William Blake’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake/archive/copy.xq?copyid=songsie.b&amp;java=no" target="_blank">Songs of Innocence and of Experience</a> </i>(1789) is a collection of illuminated poems separated into two groupings, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Songs of Innocence </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Songs of Experience</i>, that engage with their respective, eponymous forces and ostensibly present them as a dichotomy, or perhaps rather as a linear transition, with innocence giving way to experience. But to consider the poem a presentation of binaries or opposing forces, discounts much of the Blakean aesthetic. For me, it wasn’t just the text and the accompanying illustrations that helped to frame and reify the dialectical counterbalance between innocence and experience in Blake’s work, but rather the addition of a third dimension: <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Ginsberg-Blake.php" target="_blank">Allen Ginsberg’s musical renditionof the work, available through PennSound</a>. It’s through Ginsberg’s off-key, warbling, sometimes out-of-time, performance of the lyric that we get a simultaneous embracing of the Romantic ideology and the Modernist rejection of it, coexistent and counterbalanced to great aesthetic effect. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Content and form of the original poems<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">First, a little on my view of Blake’s work. The presentation of Blake’s poem, the separation into groupings of innocence and of experience, would imply that each grouping is discrete and addresses solely its own force. But that’s not how Blake’s collection works. It begins with the presentation of innocence, focusing on youth and pastoral imagery as a kind of thesis, but intersperses challenges to the purity of innocence, such as slavery and child labor. Through this impingement of Experience upon Innocence’s textual ground, it would be tempting to assume that Blake would chart a linear progression, with an inverse relationship between innocence and age (for which experience is an ostensible proxy or metonymy). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span>Similarly, in <i>Songs of&nbsp;</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Experience</i>, we see the focus shift to the apparent corruption of innocence: the turn toward death of the vegetal imagery (a symbol of innocence) in “The Sick Rose,” a formerly fertile pastoral space turned fallow in “The Garden of Love,” etc. But the balancing factor of this antithesis is the form, both the poetic and visual form of the work. The ballad-esque forms that project the feel of a soccer supporters club singing in a crowded pub and the bright, Technicolor images that display a kind of childlike, Crayola vibrancy even in their depiction of dark subject matter both serve to illustrate (literally) the encroachment of Innocence upon Experience. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">When I first read the work, I was expecting to see a kind of Hegelian dialectic take shape: thesis (Innocence) collides with antithesis (Experience), with the residue of the collision, the synthesis (death?), resolving, in time, the conflict. But what we actually get is a non-Hegelian dialectic, similar to the way Henry Sayre describes William Carlos Williams’ dichotomy between reality and the imagination. It’s not that one force is the established hegemony and a challenger will seek to supplant it, but rather that the two forces can and do coexist symbiotically, even if ostensibly opposed. Innocence needs Experience to care for it. We see this repeatedly throughout the poems—imagery of shepherds and mothers and nurses representing Experience’s nurture of Innocence. Later, we see the content turn dark, toward Experience, but the form seeks to counterbalance it through interspersed innocence, including youth as a palliative presence in “London," and the persistent presence of vegetation as a symbol of innocence. Through this disjuncture, Innocence offers its help to Experience. It seeks to show that reality is constructed through perception, through the imagination (as WCW would claim over a century later), and that Innocence is ever-present and can be invoked at any point to act as a counterbalance. In this manner, we get two contingent and interdependent forces, which can never devolve into one superseding the other, nor a Hegelian synthesis. It’s perhaps Kantian, in that innocence is tied to perception (phenomena) and experience gets bound up in an immutable reality, a progression toward death (noumena). We can’t altogether avoid the noumenal reality of things, but we can and do construct a phenomenal reality through perception. Blake suggests that this process can be conscious—innocence can be recalled and applied to temper experience—in much the same way Williams calls upon the imagination to temper reality.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ginsberg’s performance of the collection<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">While Ginsberg offers a unique interpretation of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Songs</i> through his musical renditions, I find that listening while looking at the original illuminated texts provides the best feel for how Ginsberg extends and complements the content and form aurally. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Starting from the first song, the introduction to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Innocence</i>, the poem describes a biblical divine inspiration, wherein a piper meets a messianic child on a cloud who is moved by his song. The child asks the piper to “pipe a song about a Lamb”—note the capitalization here, likely an allusion to the Christian “Lamb of God” and reflexive to the child who requests it. From there, the child asks the piper to sing, and then finally to write. The order here should not be overlooked. This subordination would be echoed by poets from Ezra Pound (“music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance…poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music”) through Olson (written poetry as derivative of kinesis and human breath) through Vachel Lindsay (who saw written poems as librettos to sung/performed poems). So the progressions goes: melody to song to text, the latter being necessary for preservation, though inferior to the former options. This framing works well for Ginsberg’s performance, where he becomes the inspired, revitalizing the textual representations of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Songs</i> into their intended sung forms. As discussed in the <a href="http://poemtalkatkwh.blogspot.com/2008/03/bard-goes-country-pt4.html" target="_blank">PoemTalk on this work</a>, he becomes the bard who composes and sings these songs to us, through a divine inspiration. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In addition, the musical choices made throughout Ginsberg’s interpretation of Blake intertwine with the content and form. Starting from the introduction to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Innocence, </i>we hear the choice to include a flute, which seems meant to evoke the piper’s pipe. The flute exists throughout the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Songs of Innocence</i>, and seems to become an aural symbol of innocence. Its presence in poems where Experience impinges upon Innocence, such as in “<a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Ginsberg/Blake/Songs-of-Innocence/Ginsberg-Allen_07_The-Chimney-Sweeper_New-York_12-15-69.mp3" target="_blank">The ChimneySweep</a>,” begin to create an aural disjuncture parallel to that created between the darkening theme of child labor against the images of children embracing and perhaps celebrating their liberation by the angel. The flute all but disappears as we progress into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Experience</i> (save for “To Tirzah.”)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Most interesting to me in terms of musical arrangement is the lack of drums in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Innocence, </i>and their appearance on certain tracks in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Experience. </i>To me, this is a crucial detail, as drums mark regular time and evoke the metronome, an anathemized<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>symbol in the modernist aesthetic—“compose in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of the metronome,” said Pound—for its association with mechanized poetic forms. The introduction of drums in “<a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Ginsberg/Blake/Songs-of-Experience/Ginsberg-Allen_05_The-Garden-of-Love_New-York_12-15-69.mp3" target="_blank">The Garden of Love</a>” and culminating in “<a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Ginsberg/Blake/Songs-of-Experience/Ginsberg-Allen_09_The-Grey-Monk_New-York_12-15-69.mp3" target="_blank">The Grey Monk</a>,” (though this work is not part of Blake's <i>Songs of Experience</i>)&nbsp;with drum legend Elvin Jones playing on the latter, to me connotes a conscious aesthetic choice to chart a course toward the Romantic aesthetic of poetry, as innocence becomes background to experience. To counterbalance the Romantic ideology, we have Ginsberg’s warbling, whimsical, out-of-key vocals continuing to evoke Innocence, now impinging upon Experience, through their association with childlike revelry. Herein do we get an aural, non-Hegelian dialectic taking shape. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Finally and most importantly, I would note the increased degree of production and polish we can perceive when we arrive at the final song in Ginsberg's <i>Songs of</i>&nbsp;<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Experience</i>, “The Grey Monk.” The fact that this track is appended to the album is an interesting aesthetic decision itself, as "The Grey Monk" is not part of Blake's <i>Songs of Experience</i>. Ginsberg's decision to include it as a conclusion seems to signify where he thinks the <i>Songs' </i>logical end-point lies should innocence be depleted: violence and renewed tyranny.&nbsp;Only an "intellectual thing" like a tear, which also has religious connotations of contrition, forgiveness, and thus return to innocence, can restore balance.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The music that started out sounding like a ragtag group of folk musicians in the introduction to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Innocence</i> now takes on a much more professional and produced feel, even moving toward including professional musicians like Elvin Jones on the track. This move toward a manicured production is directly in parallel with the Romantic aesthetic of attempting to reach a kind of purity through form. At the same time as the we reach the (overwrought?) zenith of this formal trend, we reach the nadir of the darkening of the content. So the Romantic aesthetic seems to chart a linear course with the growing hegemony of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Experience. </i>At the same time, Ginsberg’s out-of-key vocals conjure the modernist aesthetic—the kind of beauty-in-the-broken aesthetic captured so well by William Carlos Williams, a primary inspiration of Ginsberg’s. So here we have the Blakean concept of Innocence merging with the modernist aesthetic of Ginsberg's time, present and acting as a counterbalance to the Romantic Experience that has come to the fore. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1354</o:Words> <o:Characters>7722</o:Characters> <o:Company>University of Pennsylvania</o:Company> <o:Lines>64</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>18</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>9058</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>14.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="&#45;-"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true" DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99" LatentStyleCount="276"> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">And so I propose that, not only do we get a dialectical balance between innocence and experience in Ginsberg’s rendition of Blake, but so too an interplay between Romanticism and Modernism. And all of this is made present by the aural facets and production choices made in the creation of the album. In this way, Ginsberg helps us to perceive both the complexity of Blake’s work and Blake’s position as a proto-modernist. <o:p></o:p></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/wjmnGOH-Cic" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/01/aural-dialectics-on-allen-ginsbergs.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-50165845470190495712014-01-16T18:34:00.001-05:002014-01-16T18:42:25.708-05:00The William Carlos Williams Band: The Musicality of "The Wind Increases"<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4052/4443749377_17fef6c662_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4052/4443749377_17fef6c662_b.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picture by Brenderous, used under Creative Commons license<br />http://www.flickr.com/photos/brenderous/</td></tr></tbody></table>As I was conducting research for my seminar paper last term, a paper that used a William Carlos Williams poem to work toward a computational, phonotextual theory on performative commonality, I generated some byproducts that are best described as...curiosities.<br /><br />In the course of the research, I suggested that Melodyne, an audio tool that is capable of transcribing audio files to musical notation, could be used to consider the "musicality" of a poet's performance of a work. In particular, I suggested that it offers a unique visualization of pitch dynamics and tempo accelerations and decelerations. As an example, I exported William Carlos Williams reading his famous poem "To Elsie" to a musical score and compared the musical visualization of a segment with the poem's form and content. As I was learning to do this, I also experimented with exporting Williams' voice to MIDI files, which I then read back into MIDI digital instruments and rendered the literal <i>musicality</i> (a term so often used to speak metaphorically of the mellifluence of a poem) of the performance.<br /><br />I originally did this with a lesser-known Williams poem called "The Wind Increases," read in 1942 for the National Council of Teachers of English's <i>Contemporary Poets Series. </i>I chose it because I found it to be sonically beautiful (in addition to being inspiringly Whitmanian).&nbsp;Here is the recording, taken from PennSound and with some hiss removed to aid in the conversion. &nbsp;Listen to the sonic properties--consider how Williams' performance kind of crescendos in tempo, intensity, and pitch. It's a great example of a poem's aural properties being particularly expressive of its content, I think.<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/129885219&amp;color=ff6600&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe> <br /><br />My first step was to convert the poem to MIDI, a format that can be read by digital musical instruments. Melodyne offers three ways to export MIDI: 1) percussive, 2) melodic, and 3) polyphonous. A percussive export offers a single note or tone in the cadence of the source. So for example, when used with speech, it should resemble the prosodic properties of the speech. A melodic export offers the pitch and tonality of the source, too. So it can output multiple notes and resemble the pitch AND prosody of the source. A polyphonous export is like a melodic export, except that it's capable of representing chords, multiple notes hit at the same time.<br /><br />So let's see what happened when I created a melodic export of Williams' voice from his reading "The Wind Increases" and passed it through an electric guitar MIDI instrument:<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/129886417&amp;color=ff6600&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe> <br /><br />As you can see, we are presented with a literal interpretation of the musicality of the poem, give or take (I can't confirm that Melodyne's transcription is error free). Pretty cool, I thought!<br /><br />Or how about the polyphonous export passed through a drum kit MIDI instrument:<br /><br /><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/129887337&amp;color=ff6600&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe> (I also created a bass track using a percussive export, but that's not very interesting on its own.)<br /><br />All of this brings us to the main event of our show this evening, to the headlining act: The William Carlos Williams Band. Here you have WCW on vocals (reading his poem), guitar, bass, and drums, all at the same time. All of the tracks are different renderings of his voice reading the poem, overlaid:<br /><br /><br /><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/129887894&amp;color=ff6600&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe> <br /><br />There you have it. Now you know what happens when you turn someone who knows just enough to be dangerous loose in a poetry archive with sophisticated audio software and too much time!<br /><br />I'm still considering how, if at all, Melodyne can support phonotextual analysis, but I thought you might enjoy these byproducts of my research.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/q2Yo8PbS3rs" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com2http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-william-carlos-williams-band.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-49320278613636669142014-01-09T20:54:00.002-05:002014-01-09T21:10:24.976-05:00Resocializing technology: the loss of public spaces to private technology<div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3548/3321886443_41c61ebc49_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3548/3321886443_41c61ebc49_n.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by StudioTempura, used under CreativeCommons<br />http://www.flickr.com/photos/zero101/</td></tr></tbody></table>I was speaking with a friend recently, and he mentioned in passing that he has a standing gathering with other friends to listen to a monthly radio show together. I’m not sure why this social gathering around radio resonated with me so much, but I have been thinking about it since. I think it’s because I conceived of traditional AM/FM radio as a solitary activity, something you listen to in the car while traveling, perhaps. The idea of recontextualizing it as a social activity was fantastic to me.<br /><br />I’ve since come to have a standing time, Sunday evenings, to listen to a <a href="http://www.vuvuzelaradio.com/" target="_blank">local soccer show </a>on AM radio with my wife (we’re both big soccer fans). It’s become one of my favorite events of the week. We sit together and listen to the hosts discuss various topics, and we give each other skeptical looks when we disagree with something or nod vehemently when we agree. Why did we just start doing this now? And, more importantly, are there other formerly social—and I use that in the purest sense of the word, not as in “social media”—technologies that have become privatized and could be resocialized?<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I thought it might be useful to think through some areas where the acquisition of private technologies have had a social cost. I’m aware that this post could end up being circulated with the hashtag #oldGuyThingsToSay, but I’m willing to take that risk to clarify my thoughts on the matter. While I do no suggest that we revert to some idyllic period where we throw our laptops against the wall in a frenzied act of liberation, I do invite you to ponder the topic.<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Video Games </b>– I grew up during the death throes of the American arcade. Arcades were still around (and I loved visiting them), but they had started to be supplanted by the home gaming console. It’s true that, during this time in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the hardware in the arcades outpaced home game consoles, but the home games were pretty damn good, and more importantly, convenient. But as people flocked to the more convenient option, something social was lost. Sure, you could have a friend or two over and play, but that’s not the same as a public space (what sociologists sometimes call a “public,” used as a noun) where people could meet others and socialize in groups. I realize that there is a kind of virtual socializing that comes with massively multiplayer games, but I think that’s something different. I think, like facebook, it fosters numerous weak ties and few strong ones. <br /><br /></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Video Rentals</b> – Yes, functionally speaking, there is no comparison between the video store days of <br /><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3177/2539112949_e7fd83154a_m.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3177/2539112949_e7fd83154a_m.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Daniel Spils<br />Used under CreativeCommons<br />http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielspils/</td></tr></tbody></table>yore and the experience of having access to the wealth of material provided by Netflix and Amazon VoD. But hear me out on this one. Think about going to Blockbuster (or West Coast Video) with your friends or family to pick out a tape. The trip to the store and the physical browsing was, I would argue, more of the overall experience than watching the film itself. It’s not social in the same way that arcades were, but it was still a public of sorts. You could run into friends and their families there, etc. The ubiquitous access to movies anywhere with an internet connect is a vastly superior functional experience, but it’s hard to argue that nothing was lost in the privitization of the home movie watching process. <br /><br /></div><div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Cambria; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><b>Computer Labs</b> – Being the son of a faculty member and working at a university since I graduated from one, I’ve been at universities my whole life. When I was going to school, I worked in and spent much of my time in the computer labs (yes, I’m a geek). The reason was that all of my friends were there. We would work on assignments there and play games (sometimes more games than assignments). It was one of the greatest publics I’ve experienced to this day. People would come and go, and we would make new friends and spend hours with current friends. We would have food d<span style="text-indent: -0.25in;">elivered (we didn’t see that sign that said “No food or drink in the labs!!!!”), and it was a kind of home to us. As a result, you can imagine how I feel about the current question that comes up constantly at universities: “Can we get rid of labs? Most students have their own computers.” Functionally speaking, yes. We could probably almost get rid of labs (not quite). But socially speaking, I think it’s a big mistake. It will be yet another public subsumed into the privitization of technology. I understand that there is no lack of socializing in college, even without the labs, but for some people the lab is an important hybrid space between work and play. It will be sad to see it go the way of the arcade. See <a href="http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/myth-about-need-public-computer-labs" target="_blank">here</a> for more info.</span><br /><span style="text-indent: -0.25in;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1178/538590923_493c7190d1_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1178/538590923_493c7190d1_z.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by John Kannenberg, used under CreativeCommons<br />http://www.flickr.com/photos/jkannenberg/</td></tr></tbody></table>So what’s the point? Is this a verbose old-guy lament for the halcyon days of the past? Maybe a little. But more than that it’s a suggestion. A suggestion to consider how you can resocialize the aspects of your life that have been privatized by the ubiquity of technology and internet connections. <br /><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>739</o:Words> <o:Characters>4214</o:Characters> <o:Company>University of Pennsylvania</o:Company> <o:Lines>35</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>8</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>5175</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">My friends who meet up to listen the radio got this so very right. And it’s not the fact that they use an actual radio; they could just as easily stream the show online. The point is that they listen together, in person. I’ve taken their good example as a challenge to consider the way I use technology for entertainment and for consuming cultural material. While I probably won’t be picking up some Sour Patch Kids to go along with my VHS rental anytime soon, I’ll keep an eye out for ways I can restore the social aspect of life where it has been lost.&nbsp;</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/RPOWka2cqfI" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com1http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/01/resocializing-technology-loss-of-public.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-2004781335998003262014-01-08T22:46:00.002-05:002014-01-08T22:46:17.943-05:00A Comment on PoemTalk #73, Steve Benson's "Did the Lights Just Go Out?"As I listened to the <a href="https://jacket2.org/podcasts/it-over-already-poemtalk-73" target="_blank">newest episode of the fantastic PoemTalk podcast</a>, I found myself wishing, as I sometimes do, that I could contribute a comment to the group's reading of the poem. Then I thought, "Wait--I have a blog! That means that I can contribute a prolix, meandering comment without getting the stage hook, as I would if I were there!" And so begins my post.<br /><br />In this episode of PoemTalk, the discussion centers around an improvised performance poem comprised of a series of questions, a poem by Steve Benson recorded at the Bowery Poetry Club, available at <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Benson.php" target="_blank">PennSound</a>. The poem was later transcribed as "Did the Lights Just Go Out?" Benson performs a similar (similar in that it is also comprised of serial questions) improvisation three days later at the Kelly Writers House, also available at <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Benson.php" target="_blank">PennSound</a>.<br /><br />While the content and formal aspects of the poem are clever and interesting, the expressive value of sonic properties of the performance were to me, the most striking. Have a listen to this excerpt from the<a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Benson/Benson-Steve_Segue_NY_2-8-03_Excerpt-2.mp3" target="_blank"> BPC recording</a> and this <a href="http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Benson/Benson-Steve_UPenn_2-11-03_Excerpt-3.mp3" target="_blank">one from the Kelly Writers House</a>. What strikes you first? For me it's the percussive, sometimes-staccato cadence of Benson's reading, mixed with the slight nasal timbre of the way he chooses to read it. The minute pauses interjected into natural language serve as a disruption of what Tsur would call the "speech mode" and cause a shift into the poetic mode. That's because words run together when we speak them. Language does not sound the way it looks, in that most textual representations of language consist of words delimited by spaces, whereas spoken language crams together streams of words and lets the brain sort 'em out, as it were.<br /><br />So what does Benson's disruption of the continuity of expected speech express? My first thought was that it approaches the robotic, and more specifically, the way a computer speaks when it converts text to speech. To me, this is brilliant. Why? Enter the content and form. The questions from Benson's series of queries range from the quotidian ("can you sew it on?") through the thought-provoking ("what makes a reason good?") through the soul-piercingly perceptive, paradoxically declaring through its interrogatives:<br /><br />"<br /><div style="text-align: left;">Is there a reason to go about things</div><div style="text-align: left;">the way that you're doing it,</div><div style="text-align: left;">or is it sort of automatic, intuitive?</div><div style="text-align: left;">Is it spontaneous?</div><div style="text-align: left;">Are you expressing yourself?</div><div style="text-align: left;">Are your senses experiencing the expression of yourself,</div><div style="text-align: left;">or does it only extend outward from yourself,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and where do you locate yourself when you express yourself?</div><div style="text-align: left;">"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">before returning to the mundane: "have you found your hat?"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The PoemTalkers have it just right when they note that the questions are almost a mimesis of a child asking his or her parents for more information about the world. But I think that that the knowledge-thirsty questions aimed at explaining experiential phenomena paired with the disrupted, robotic sonic properties of the reading evoke a kind of artificial intelligence asking the listener to teach it. The framing that most PennSound listeners would have for the recording, that of listening to it on their computers, gives extra weight to this feeling, and changes the aesthetic of the work from what I would imagine hearing it live would be, and certainly from its textual representation. &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The brilliance of Benson's work, to me, comes from this aesthetic paired with the dramatic ordering of his queries. I pictured my computer or an automaton &nbsp;trying to learn from me by asking me basic questions, crescendoing, as it learned, to queries that demonstrated that it had a better grasp of humanity than I, a human, did.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Just for fun, I've created a recording of my computer reading the above block quote from Benson's poem through text to speech:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/128597747&amp;color=ff6600&amp;auto_play=false&amp;show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe> <div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/-ZJ9Lti4qEI" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-comment-on-poemtalk-73-steve-bensons.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-6760148381908609092014-01-07T13:48:00.002-05:002014-01-07T13:48:16.927-05:00New Tab RedirectIt's been a while since I've written any tech tips here (yes, yes--indeed a while since I've written <i>anything</i>&nbsp;here), so I thought I would mention a new Chrome extension that's improved my usage experience.<br /><br /><b>The problem: </b>Whenever you open a new tab in Chrome, the tab defaults to Chrome's "New Tab Page," a landing page with a faux[1] Google search box and some tiles that go to frequently accessed websites. I do not want the New Tab Page to open every time I open a new tab; I'd like to be able to set my new tab page to anything I want. Alas, Chrome's built-in settings do not allow for this. You can set your startup page and your home page, but not your new tab page.<br /><br /><b>The solution: </b>There is a Chrome extension called <a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab-redirect/icpgjfneehieebagbmdbhnlpiopdcmna?hl=en" target="_blank">New Tab Redirect</a> that solves the problem. Just install it, and you have the ability to set your new tab page to anything of your choosing, including locally hosted HTML pages. Super easy and, I think, a much better user experience.<br /><br />[1]I use "faux" as a modifier here because the search box does not do anything, per se. It moves your cursor to the URL bar ("omni bar" in Google parlance), which allows you to execute search queries directly from it. I don't like this model, personally, because I disable auto-complete for searches in the URL bar for privacy reasons (I don't want all keystrokes in the URL bar sent to Google, regardless of whether I am searching). That said, when I do intent to search, I want auto-complete. So I always search from Google.com. So, in my particular case, I actually ended up using New Tab Redirect to set my new tab page to google.com. Seems like this should be a built-in option in Google Chrome.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/FKAuiEhyDsg" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2014/01/new-tab-redirect.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-48254985717201875402013-01-19T12:28:00.000-05:002013-01-20T07:40:52.329-05:00On my hesitance to use "reticent" to mean "hesitant"<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/218/490525256_27af9dd086.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/218/490525256_27af9dd086.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Used under Creative Commons from <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/prawnwarp/490525256/" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Whenever I'm listening to someone speak, especially a public figure or a television character, and I hear "reticent" used in place of "reluctant" or "hesitant," I think my eye begins to twitch a little. That usage is just wrong, right? Well, as a good postmodern, I've trained myself to stop and consider my potential absolutism whenever my brain renders a subconscious judgment. <br /><br />You're all familiar, I'm sure, with the idea of language as a living entity, one that evolves and changes over time to properly reflect the current historical moment, society, beliefs, and culture. Terms become archaic (it's seldom that I ask my wife "Whence do you come?" or "Wither shall we go?"), they take on new meanings ("text me later, bro"), neologisms are created ("She IM'd me last night"), and even the use of articles changes (in American English, you rarely see constructions like "an historical moment" [unless someone is trying to be pretentious]).&nbsp; (This doesn't even touch on the evolution of syntax ("Hi, Chris" becomes the email salutation "Hi Chris," we don't say <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15306" target="_blank">"What price bananas?" to the person stocking the supermarket in California</a>.)<br /><br />But I'm not sure that language can live in total postmodernism. For language to be a communicative—which, conveniently enough, is rooted in the same Latin "communis" or "common" as "community"—device, it must hold some <i>common</i>, shared meaning. I think language is most effective when all of the participants connect the same referent with the same referrer, i.e. a rose is a rose; a rose is not an apple. <br /><br />It turns out that, just like <a href="http://youtu.be/zsGnFExpup8" target="_blank">the correct answer to what kind of bear is best</a>, there are two schools of thought, and its unlikely that consensus will take shape. <br /><br />These two schools are known as descriptivists and prescriptivists. The former, as the name implies, believes that the role of linguists is to watch how language is used and describe it in works such as the OED and Webster's. <a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/01/7265/" target="_blank">According to English professor Mark Bauerline</a>, a turning point for descriptivists was the 1961 publishing of Webster's New International Dictionary, the first dictionary to embrace the idea of descriptvism. <br /><br />Before that time, prescriptivists controlled a linguistic hegemony. This group, as you can likely foresee, believes that there should be an authoritative source (I cringe at the sound of that) on the proper use of language. Bauerline points out that in the Webster's that precedes the 1961 printing, the 1934 edition, some words received the loving categorizations "erroneous" or "illiterate"! (<a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2013/01/7265/" target="_blank">ibid</a>)<br /><br />I think my other eye just started twitching. It seems that if there is something worse than what seems to be an "incorrect" use of language, it could be a kind of sanctimonious, absolutist body that renders judgment about whether a particular person's use of language is "illiterate"! While the purpose of Bauerline's essay in <a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/" target="_blank">The Public Discourse</a>, a very conservative publication, is quite to the contrary of the way I'm using it here, it contains good evidence that is useful to this discussion, not the least of which is a quote from Harvard linguist Steven Pinker, who comments on how authoritative uses of language form:<br /><br />"It begins when a self-anointed expert elevates one of his peeves or cockamamie theories into an authoritative pronouncement that some usage is incorrect, or better still, ignorant, barbaric, and vulgar."<br /><br />For example, it seems that even John Dryden (of whom I'm a big fan) may be personally responsible <a href="http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/hsl_shl/preposition%20stranding.htm" target="_blank">for creating the "rule"</a> that one can't end a sentence on a preposition (<a href="http://stancarey.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/descriptivism-vs-prescriptivism-war-is-over-if-you-want-it/" target="_blank">link found here</a>). I'm not sure what he's going on about. <br /><br />So that's a fine dilemma. Given all of that, is the person who's reticent to cross this busy street correct (danger of imminent crushage notwithstanding)? I think I'm even more torn than when I first started thinking about this. I really want that usage to be "wrong," but I really don't want there to be a wrong. Given the lesser of two evils situation here, I guess I will cast my vote against conservatism and absolutism. Use words to refer to whatever you want, and I will attempt to divine the referent by the context of the word's use.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/fqWkdY6ENw4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com2http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2013/01/on-my-hesitance-to-use-reticent-to-mean.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-37872493253220754202013-01-13T10:11:00.000-05:002013-01-13T10:11:03.260-05:00When a click will do: A proposal for "liking" email<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4141/4857593259_a2b5bb85c5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4141/4857593259_a2b5bb85c5.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by: Owen Brown, Used under Creative Commons license<br />http://www.flickr.com/photos/owenwbrown/4857593259/</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table>As someone who loves writing, language, and the nuance that a command of the language can convey, I feel slightly self-conscious about making the proposal that I’m about to. OK, I’m just going to say it: they should add a “like” button to email services like Gmail. That doesn’t mean, as many have suggested, that it would function as “like” buttons on blogs, which send the item of your liking to Facebook. It means that there should be a quick way to acknowledge the receipt of a message or convey approval when a detailed text-based answer is unnecessary. <br /><br /><br />Here’s an anecdotal syllogism that could be idiosyncratic to me, but I suspect not:<br /><br /><hr /><br /><b>Premise 1</b> — I get a ton of email everyday<br /><br /><b>Premise 2</b> — I feel that it’s good form to reply to almost every email to acknowledge it, even if the response is just “thanks!” or “ok”<br /><i><b><br /></b></i><i><b>Therefore</b></i> — I respond to a ton of freaking email, many of these responses being a single word of acknowledgement/approval.<br /><br /><hr /><br />So what if, next to the buttons for reply, forward, etc, there were a simple “like” button. It would be a binary communication device that, when clicked, would instantly display to the sender that their message was understood.<br /><br />Examples: “Great, I’ll be at your house tomorrow at 7pm.” Like. “I ran your budget report and put it in the shared drive for you.” Like. “Everything is going well with the project.” Like. <br /><br />&nbsp;Of course, as on Facebook, you could opt to accompany this with a brief message/comment if you so chose, but you would have the option to nicely wrap up a conversation with a&nbsp; single click. <br /><br />I think that I, like many, have become accustomed to processing large amounts of information in a scroll, click, and comment style of information filtering and interaction. In Facebook, I move quickly through my newsfeed, reading, liking, briefly commenting, and learning about what my friends are up to. In Twitter, I can read through the tweets of people I following and retweet with the click of a button. In Google Reader, I can move through hundreds of blog posts quickly, sharing with a single click. Why not email too?<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/jZ3eOsm1tTU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com4http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2013/01/when-click-will-do-proposal-for-liking.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-71118454159862896072011-06-30T18:56:00.002-04:002011-06-30T22:16:18.404-04:00Google Plus: First Impressions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5bOmZy0HqYk/Tgz_CElIacI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/GC0cs_oABDM/s1600/plus" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="61" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5bOmZy0HqYk/Tgz_CElIacI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/GC0cs_oABDM/s200/plus" width="200" /></a></div>So I was fortunate enough to be an early user of Google Plus, Google's new answer to Facebook. And, so far, I would say that it's not bad, but it's unclear if it will offer anything that will overcome the inertia keeping most users bound to Facebook.<br /><br />The biggest promise in Plus is a granular sharing experience, the ability to craft virtual relationships that mirror the nuance of real-life ties. One of the most significant problems with early implementations of Facebook was the homogenization of degrees of acquaintance (e.g. friends vs. closest friends vs. family, etc.) into the binary categorization of "friend." Clearly, this ersatz virtual construct didn't offer the necessary mirroring of real-space relationships, and caused worlds to collide, a la the social networking cautionary tale of the day. Facebook moved toward correcting this with the creation of lists, but Plus takes it a step further.<br /><br />In Plus, you add people to "circles," arbitrary collections that you can use to replicate the nuance of real-world relationships. For example, you could create a group called "high school" and put all of your high school friends in it, a group for your coworkers, etc. They also state that the group names are private, so friends are unaware of the name of the group you place them in (though I still wouldn't recommend making a group called "enemies"!).&nbsp; Every time you share anything (a status, a picture, etc.), you make a conscious decision as to which circle(s) you share it with. In the experience I've had so far, this is much more controlled and conscious a process than Facebook sharing through lists.<br /><br />Another feature I like is that Plus stays true to Google's ethos of "data liberation." That is to say, they make it very easy to get any data you put into Plus out. You can download, for example, any pictures that you upload back to your local machine. This, I think, is actually a big deal. <strike>One of the things that keeps people pretty locked into Facebook is the difficulty involved with getting data out of it. To the best of my knowledge, there is not way to download all of your data en masse. </strike><b>Correction in the comments--thanks, Chris L! I didn't realize that. </b><br /><br />In terms of design aesthetic, Plus is very austere, in the minimalist tradition of Facebook (in what I think is reactionary to the carnival chic that was MySpace). Though, to me, the feel is bordering on insipid. From an interface perspective, it seems fairly intuitive and easy to use.<br /><br />While the service does offer some interesting features (video chat, group IM discussions from mobile devices, etc.), I haven't seen anything that feels revolutionary. Unless Plus is able to capitalize on a youth-led exodus from Facebook (as a reaction to the mainstream/adult presence there), I doubt that it will, at this point, make much of a dent in Facebook's market share. But I do feel like it has a better chance of being successful than Buzz or Wave (though I do think Wave was misunderstood and a good product).<br /><br />Would love to hear your opinions on this.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/abuwM2MCk7o" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com2http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2011/06/google-plus-first-impressions.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-51386203584595109052011-06-28T22:56:00.001-04:002011-06-28T23:01:40.354-04:00The Poetry of Space: Mise En Scene<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kbDN-B_QlJI/TgqTg8vorlI/AAAAAAAAA38/qe1yYglHuaE/s1600/Artaud_manray.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kbDN-B_QlJI/TgqTg8vorlI/AAAAAAAAA38/qe1yYglHuaE/s1600/Artaud_manray.jpg" /></a></div>Don't ask how my tortuous reading/reference path lead me to reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Theater-Its-Double-Antonin-Artaud/dp/0802150306/">Theater and Its Double</a> by semi-crazy playwright Antonin Artaud, but it did. While Artaud lays the groundwork for his famous <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theater_of_Cruelty">Theater of Cruelty</a> concept, in between some fairly pretentious puffery, he takes a very interesting stance: that words and dialogue are the province of books--not theater. Huh.<br /><br />Artaud refers to the theater as the "poetry of space," or a "language created for the senses." This is in opposition to written dialogue or text, which he considers to be the domain of the "mind." I thought that this concept was really cool, as it immediately made me think of all of the times I've seen my wife perform modern dance, and it really is the poetry of space. <br /><br />To appreciate what he means by this dialogue-to-aesthetic dichotomy vis-a-vis theater, we have to consider his definition of "mise en scene." I say his definition because he explicitly points out his disdain for using the term to refer to props on the stage, the costumes, etc.--ornamental additions to the scene. When Artaud uses "mise en scene," he means the complete aesthetic experience: the unique interaction between music, lighting, props, movement, gestures, facial expression--everything but the spoken dialogue, save for its sonic properties, like intonation and cadence. "It is the mise en scene that is the theater," he asserts.<br /><br />I thought this concept was fascinating. It makes a lot of sense, but I had never considered divorcing the language of theater from the rest of the aesthetics. In fact, the dialogue has always been central to me, and I read more plays than I get to see in person (alas). <br /><br />But no intelligent point is complete without the devolution of a sound idea into a polemic! Artuad skillfully interleaves his distaste for the mise en scene living "under the exclusive dictatorship of speech" in Western theater:<br /><br />"In any case, I hasten to say it at once, a theater which subordinates the mise en scene and production…to the text, is a theater of idiots, madmen, inverts, grammarians, grocers, antipoets, and positivists, i.e. Occidentals"<br /><br />Yikes. Ad hominem at its best!<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/ZvhWyrFx5X4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com1http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2011/06/poetry-of-space-mise-en-scene.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-69931246406505995342011-06-21T18:52:00.000-04:002011-06-21T18:52:25.893-04:00Socializing the book<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FeA0clbraPw/TgDhb8sDNpI/AAAAAAAAA34/01SqP0U7N28/s1600/remix_cover_small.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5620740205221983890" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FeA0clbraPw/TgDhb8sDNpI/AAAAAAAAA34/01SqP0U7N28/s320/remix_cover_small.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 212px;" /></a><br /><pre wrap="">The discussion of creation through the juxtaposition of existing elements can take many forms. <a href="http://remix.lessig.org/">For example, Lawrence Lessig’s Remix</a> puts forth the idea that mixing individually copyrighted elements, like overlaying a song on top of a series film clips, creates a new entity, the remix, that shouldn’t be subject to copyright constraints on each of its components. The argument is that the remixer has created something new, a new work of art born of the unique juxtaposition of existing works. In the course of reading a book lent to me by my good friend Warren today, I found myself intrigued by how his notes in the margins transformed the book into something else, a new work of sorts. <br /><br />The book that Warren lent me (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Isnt-What-Ready---Wear/dp/0062500171/ref=sr_1_1">Reality Isn’t What It Used to Be</a>, an excellent exploration of the social construction of reality [constructivism] vs. objectivism) stands on its own as a solid scholarly work. But I found my eyes constantly drawn to Warren’s scrawls in the margins. Pithy phrases like, “Descartes” and “Tower of Babel” either created a unique form of synthesis through a juxtaposition he made or pointed out the potential influences in the creation of an idea. <br /><br />Of course, it’s not that interesting in and of itself to say that your eyes can be drawn to margin notes in a lent book. What I thought was interesting was the social aspect of the need I felt to respond in some cases. I wanted to, in places, say, “Yes, this is Cartesian in a way! I hadn’t considered that. It made me think of reality constructed through a Manichean lens, myself.” Perhaps he hadn’t thought of that (but he probably did). The point is that as he altered the work to create a new work through his notes, and I wanted to create yet another new work via my responses, we get toward a very social interaction with a long-form piece. <br /><br />Consider the full-circle social implications of this: <br /><blockquote>• Warren lends me a book that he thinks, knowing me, that I will finding interesting or at least provoking<br /><br />• He’s read this book and marked it up<br /><br />• I read the book and add my own notes and respond to some of his • I give the book back<br /><br />• He skims and looks for my responses. </blockquote>Unlike a traditional book group, we’ve just interacted with the work in serial. We didn’t have to remember specific ideas and discuss them. We marked all of them, and we could always discuss later. <br /><br />It makes me wonder if a technology exists to do this. Or how hard it would be to create one. For example, Kindle books allow for social underlinings/highlights. But what if you could comment up an ebook and share those comments just with your friends. It would be a new way of interacting with the long-form via social networking technologies! </pre><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/bvTwku84CxI" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2011/06/socializing-book.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-3230148149873545582011-06-20T21:43:00.003-04:002011-06-20T21:54:01.193-04:00LibriVox.Org<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uztaB_fdU2A/Tf_5R1EtVtI/AAAAAAAAA3o/oKA-rG8CpcE/s1600/librivox.png"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 130px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uztaB_fdU2A/Tf_5R1EtVtI/AAAAAAAAA3o/oKA-rG8CpcE/s320/librivox.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5620484944681588434" border="0" /></a><br />My dad sent me a link to this really cool site called <a href="http://librivox.org/">LibriVox.org</a> today. LibriVox is a site that provides completely free audio recordings of public domain works read aloud. I immediately searched their archive for my favorite authors—Christopher Marlowe first, of course, followed by Alexander Pope. I was thrilled to find a full recording of Marlowe’s "<a href="http://librivox.org/hero-and-leander-by-christopher-marlowe-and-george-chapman/">Hero and Leander</a>," and one of Pope's "<a href="http://librivox.org/an-essay-on-man-by-alexander-pope/">Essay on Man</a>." Hearing the pieces read aloud by someone with knowledge of the works, I thought, was very similar to taking an English seminar and hearing a scholar read a work with the proper inflection and cadence. Except, in this case, there was an entire archive of scholars reading, all at my fingertips.<br /><br />And so, in a way, the project is very close to the <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/">PennSound poetry project</a>, a project very dear to me that provides freely downloadable mp3s of poetry. PennSound gives the opportunity to hear a poet reading his or her own work, and in my favorite section, <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/classics.php">PennSound Classics</a>, to hear Renaissance and Medieval scholars reading works the way they were meant to be read/performed (it was really awesome to be able to record <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Wallace.html">David Wallace reading Chaucer</a>).<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yO19WwlTIOg/Tf_5gfms2iI/AAAAAAAAA3w/0LLXevrJt50/s1600/pennsound_twitter_logo.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 273px; height: 183px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yO19WwlTIOg/Tf_5gfms2iI/AAAAAAAAA3w/0LLXevrJt50/s320/pennsound_twitter_logo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5620485196616620578" border="0" /></a><br />I'm hoping to one day work on a project that will allow for a mixed multimedia presentation of the text of literary works and the audio of a reading of the work. This sort of project is usually called "alignment," and allows for awesome integration of textual presentation and multimedia presentation. For example, one could highlight lines of a poem and hear the author or a scholar read just the highlighted text. If the process could ever be automated well, imagine what could be done by bringing together an audio archive like LibriVox with a textual archive like Project Gutenberg!<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/a1K6tmQgN-g" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2011/06/librivoxorg.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-77238949952545831122011-06-19T20:44:00.002-04:002011-06-19T20:51:13.677-04:00Don't You Forget About Me: Super Autobiographical Memories, Funes the Memorious, and the Internet<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6HPiJM8z3Y8/Tf6ZbZN072I/AAAAAAAAA3g/FGPea-92mw4/s1600/borges-collected-fictions.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6HPiJM8z3Y8/Tf6ZbZN072I/AAAAAAAAA3g/FGPea-92mw4/s320/borges-collected-fictions.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5620098080909356898" border="0" /></a><br />Just caught a portion of 60 Minutes where they were doing a story on people with "<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7166313n">super autobiographical memory</a>," a new scientific phenomenon where people can literally remember everything about their lives in stupefying detail. For example, they asked people what they were doing on random dates—"what did you do on July 7, 1990?"—and they could answer with little to no hesitation, including citing what day of the week it was! "That was a Saturday. I had a music recital in the morning, and then I went to dinner at this restaurant. I had the salmon." This triggered the thought, for me, of one of my favorite short stories, "Funes the Memorious," by Jorge Luis Borges.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">In Funes, Borges encounters a boy that was thrown from a horse and subsequently could remember every detail of his life and his environment in excruciating detail. He can recall specific cloud formations from any minute of any walk he took, his exact emotional state and degree of thermal comfort (thanks for teaching me that term, Sara!) from every minute of every day. In fact, he goes so far as to reconstruct every second of a previous day in the current day, which obviously takes the entire day, as it happens in real time. He devises alternate counting systems of arbitrary symbols up to around the number 24,000, and remembers every symbol. The amount of information he absorbs eventually leads to horrible bouts of insomnia (he can’t stop cataloging things), and he mysteriously dies at the end of the story at around 19 years old.<br /></div><br />I would often use Funes in my classes as a metaphor for the Internet. It was a cool juxtaposition of literature, technology, futurism, and humanism (not to mention constructivism). We would talk about the story during our discussions of the permanence of information on the Internet. The Internet, much like Funes, stores everything, from the most trivial bits of information ("me-formation," such as what your facebook friends had for lunch today) through our most crucial data. It never forgets; it just absorbs more information. And as search technologies improve, it can recall more of it more quickly and easily than ever before. It can lead to fond reminiscence or be the “cruel historian” it’s been called in the past.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/LgY3GE6lPBA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2011/06/dont-you-forget-about-me-super.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-37039358245616795482011-02-08T12:21:00.004-05:002011-02-08T15:43:23.037-05:00Books Through BarsIt would be stating the obvious to declare that volunteering one's time to help the less fortunate can be a perspective-altering, empathy-inspiring experience. But spending time at a recent <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/">Kelly Writers House</a> volunteer event at <a href="http://www.booksthroughbars.org/">Books Through Bars</a> challenged several misconceptions that I had about prisoners in our correctional facilities.<br /><br />Books Through Bars is a nonprofit that sends books to prisoners incarcerated in US correctional facilities. I wasn't previously aware of this, but most prisons will not accept books from any sources other than bookstores—Amazon, for example—or approved nonprofits. So BTB fills a crucial role: providing prisoners with literature at a time when budget constraints are forcing prisons to cut back on educational programs (as one of the BTB staffers said, "you can't cut back on food or heat, so education is the first thing to go").<br /><br />I first became aware of BTB when a good friend of mine, <a href="http://afilreis.blogspot.com/">Al Filreis</a>, donated a book to them in my honor as a holiday present. It was a perfect present, really, as it involved two of my loves: education and literature. So when I saw a listserv message land in my inbox about volunteering at BTB, I jumped at the opportunity to help out with this phenomenal program. We planned to spend a Saturday morning/early afternoon reading letters from prisoners requesting books, selecting books accordingly for them, and packing those books for mailing.<br /><br />The Philadelphia location of BTB, located in the <a href="http://the-aspace.org/">A-Space</a> in West Philadelphia, feels like a cross between an excellent used book store and grade school art class (and I mean that affectionately), with several tables covered in scissors, rolls of tape, and brown paper bags for packing books. The book selection, comprised completely of donated books, was amazing. There's an entire room on the first floor dedicated to fiction and reference books (dictionaries are the most requested books), and the basement looked like a full library, filled with stacks of shelves of categorized books. Most disciplines seemed to be represented.<br /><br />After a few practice runs of packing up books that had already been picked out by staff members (an activity that exposed by ineptness with most processes in the physical world), we were able to select letters from prisoners, read them, and search for appropriate books amongst the stacks. The letters ranged from brief requests for anything in a specific genre through elaborate letters requesting specific works and authors. The letters themselves, all of them, even the most austerely written, served to provide a sense of humanity to an otherwise anonymous and alienated group, a kind of collective entity we may tend to think of as "criminals." The letters rendered all the more obvious that these are people, perhaps people who've made bad mistakes or harmed others, but people nonetheless.<br /><br />Going into the event, I was operating under the assumption that most prisoners were undereducated, certainly not intellectuals. The first letter I opened served to disprove this misconception. The letter's author politely introduced himself and asked for works dealing with libertarianism, specifically those of Robert Heinlein. If those were not available, he asked for existentialist literature. I was floored--then thrilled. I quickly made my way to the fiction room, scurrying between others attempting to select the perfect book. While there was no Heinlein on the shelves, I was able to pack up some Camus and Kafka for him. We were given a form letter to put in with the packages (it stated regret that we could not write personalized letters), at the bottom of which I scrawled, "excellent choices! Hope you enjoy these!--BTB."<br /><br />I drew another letter from the pile, hoping that it would be a request for another genre that I knew something about. This letter, written on a scrap of loose leaf paper, asked for Classical works, specifically philosophy. Ecstatic, I ran down the stairs to the philosophy section and pulled copies of Plato's <span style="font-style: italic;">Republic</span> and Boethius' <span style="font-style: italic;">Consolation of Philosophy</span>. Perfect.<br /><br />The third letter I selected felt thicker than the rest. Inside, there was a letter from a prisoner being held in a Central-PA prison. His visage was photocopied in the upper-right corner of a typed letter. He explained that this was the second time that he had written to BTB, and that the first books had been excellent and influential on the art he creates. He asked for books on modern art, specifically by Jackson Pollock, and works that might help him develop some landscapes he was hoping to complete this year. He also included a photocopy of a short story that he wrote, which was published in a magazine, along with photocopy of some thumbnails of his paintings. (Unfortunately, my expertise in the humanities lies mainly in printed works, so I had to get a consult on which books to select for him.)<br /><br />And while it's certainly true that not all of the requests were asked for advanced literary material, every single letter was polite and well written—and provided insight into a human life. I came away from the experience with a new outlook and a new compassion for those imprisoned in our correctional facilities. Given that I think that empathy is the most crucial skill for any human to possess, I think that more people should spend a day volunteering at BTB.<br /><br />Everything BTB does, from providing the hope that literature bestows upon us, through rehabilitating through knowledge, is essential. I've decided to go on my own to volunteer as much as possible. I highly recommend that you check them out and consider getting involved.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/TWZkSe4N4rM" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2011/02/books-through-bars.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-49732814258523114202010-12-18T10:39:00.003-05:002010-12-18T10:56:38.251-05:00Tor in the TimesThere was a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/magazine/19FOB-Medium-t.html?_r=2&amp;ref=technology">good piece</a> in yesterday's <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> about Tor, the software that makes Internet communications nearly impossible to trace; in fact, it's the software at the heart of the WikiLeaks document-submission process. <br /><br />The piece focused on an interview with a Tor "evangelist," a Tor developer who travels the globe trying to inform people—mostly non-technical people—about what Tor is and why it's important. The interview was conducted by Virginia Heffernan, who admits to have difficulty understanding how Tor works, even after being provided with a series of analogies and metaphors. But I think that she does a fairly competent job of explicating the concept of Tor, at a high level, for a general audience. There is, however, definitely a kind of irony at the center of this piece: it illustrates a person whose job it is to communicate technical concepts to laymen having extreme difficulty in crafting an analogy comprehensible to the interviewer.<br /><br />Irony aside, I think it's worth reading if you're at all interested in Internet anonymity.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/vi1epvhGzb8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2010/12/tor-in-times.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-83831990724399496982010-12-15T19:20:00.000-05:002010-12-15T19:21:31.139-05:00Expanding the Definition of SLAPP Suits<style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The pernicious effects of SLAPP suits are further exacerbated when catalyzed by the Internet. The <i style="">New York Times</i> recently reported on the story of Justin Kurtz, a college student from Michigan, who wrote critical remarks about a towing company, T&amp;J Towing, that wrongfully towed his car. Kurtz went on to form a Facebook page titled “Kalamazoo Residents Against T&amp;J Towing,” in an effort to make others aware of what he saw as unethical actions on the part of T&amp;J. Unbeknownst to Kurtz when he created the group, it would soon gather attention at a viral pace. After the group acquired 800 followers, many of whom had similar stories of T&amp;J wrongfully removing their vehicles, the towing company filed a $750,000 lawsuit against Kurtz for defamation <span><span style="">(Frosch, 2010)</span></span>. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">The parallel to traditional SLAPP suits becomes immediately apparent: just like our hypothetical example of the cell company suing us at the zoning board meeting for opposing their interests, T&amp;J files this suit against Kurtz in the hopes of silencing him and dissuading others from speaking out against them. But it also illustrates an important distinction between modern interpretations of SLAPPs and traditional SLAPP suits: while Pring &amp; Canan’s original definition of SLAPP suits was narrowly focused on matters pertaining to the Petition Clause of the First Amendment, citizens’ right to petition government for redress of grievances, the modern definition engages with a broader type of free speech – citizens’ right to speak freely on a matter of public concern, a right granted by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">Pring &amp; Canan state that one of the reasons that they limited the scope of their study to cases relating to the Petition Clause was to “provide a neutral, manageable, easily applied definition whereby even opponents can agree on whether a case is a SLAPP or not” (9). So it stands to reason that there exist cases that are outside of the scope of Pring &amp; Canan’s definition, yet still carry out the deleterious effects discovered in the original study. These broader interpretations of the definition of a SLAPP suit were first addressed in the drafting of California’s anti-SLAPP legislation.</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/FgD77f0Nivc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2010/12/expanding-definition-of-slapp-suits.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-27475772384404714312010-11-20T10:41:00.001-05:002010-11-20T10:43:21.755-05:00Winners Are Losers Too: The Paradox of the “Successful” SLAPP DefenseIn discussing my research with colleagues and students, the first the first question I’m often asked is whether the filer can actually win in such a flagrant misuse of the legal system. After all, if the target is exercising a constitutionally protected right, how is there even a case to be made? The answer, unbeknownst to the asker expecting a simple “yes” or “no,” is complicated and hinges upon the definition of the word “win.”<br /><br />Indeed, as we’ve seen in the section about the transformations that occur in a SLAPP suit, the target or his attorney must recognize the case as a SLAPP suit and file a motion to dismiss. Doing so is the closest one can get to “winning” a SLAPP case – not counting states that have “SLAPP-back” legislation, where the target can actually recover “reasonable attorney’s fees” and the filer can be fined.<br /><br />Should the target not file a motion to dismiss the case on the basis of it being a violation of the First Amendment, however, the case can proceed to court and be fought on the technicalities of the injury claim. The longer the case drags on, the more damage – financial and emotional – is done to the target. Most filers, in fact, do not expect to win in the end (Pring &amp; Canan, 1996); they hope to win a war of attrition where the target will cease her protests and be silenced before the case even comes to a conclusion. In fact, it’s been shown that 83% of targets win in cases where the dispute is seen through to a ruling (Schwarz, 2007, p. 72). But, regardless of success in court, targets have noted that financial and emotional stresses of being exposed to a protracted legal proceeding have been contributing factors to divorces and bankruptcies. Thus, even if the case is seen through to the end and the court finds in favor in the target, can we actually say that she has won?<br /><br />And while harm to the target is certainly the most obvious malady attributable to a SLAPP suit, it’s possible that the most insidious harm is not done to those directly involved with the case, but to those who witness the case from a distance and are intimidated into political silence for the rest of their lives. In the case of a Denver real estate developer filing a SLAPP suit against residents who protested a city council’s decision to zone 92 acres of land for new homes, the target, Betty Johnson certainly did feel the deleterious effects of being “SLAPPed” firsthand, but the comments of other members of the community are sobering of the wide radius of the SLAPP’s shockwave. One resident confessed, after the case, “I won’t circulate another petition, and my husband wants me to get out of [community issues]” (Pring &amp; Canan, 1996). Another resident noted that, while he might participate anonymously in policy issues, he would be loath to ever put “his name on anything” again after witnessing Johnson’s struggles (Id.). One might argue that this blow to democracy cost more than any strife felt by the target herself.<br /><br />The picture gets darker if we consider the societal inequities highlighted by these suits that are predicated on the filer having more funds available (by several orders of magnitude) than the average target. It’s one thing for a person of means to be SLAPPed, but it’s another when we consider the “unequal distribution of legal services between the upper and lower classes” (Schwarz, 2007). This concept, in general, was highlighted by President Jimmy Carter in 1978 when he said that “90% of lawyers serve 10% of the people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented” (Schwarz). If these cases can bankrupt an upper-middle-class person, what hope do those of lower socioeconomic classes hope of gaining fair access to legal defense against SLAPP suits?<br /><br />So, can a person “win” a SLAPP suit that goes to court? Well his case will be successful about 83% of the time. That is, he will be successful in avoiding the average injury claim of $9-million dollars (Id.). But the great paradox here is that, even in these cases, the target – or anyone who witnesses the case – is also the loser. The equation changes, however, when we consider the fact that states can enact anti-SLAPP or SLAPP-back legislation to dissuade companies from filing SLAPP suits. In the coming section, we’ll look at this legislation and how it has helped to broaden and redefine SLAPP suits from Pring &amp; Canan’s original classification.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/nGh5AjOPcPc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2010/11/winners-are-losers-too-paradox-of.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-4647600285554252352010-11-16T07:40:00.000-05:002010-11-16T07:41:14.034-05:00Metamorphoses: The Mechanics of Traditional SLAPP Suits<style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraph, li.MsoListParagraph, div.MsoListParagraph { margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, li.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast, div.MsoListParagraphCxSpLast { margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0in; }ul { margin-bottom: 0in; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">Given that the motivation of many SLAPP suits is to stem reputational damage resulting from public speech, it makes sense for the “filer” – the title Pring and Canan bestow upon the plaintiffs in SLAPP suits – to try to take the discussion with the “target” – the defendant – out of the public sphere, where it can be subjected to reason and scrutiny.<span style=""> </span>Thus, the mechanics of the SLAPP suit serve to create this transformation: moving a case from a public, political discussion to a private, judicial dispute over technicalities (Pring &amp; Canan, 1996, p. 10).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Traditional SLAPP suits, those that seek to curtail citizens’ rights to petition government, by definition, start out being public and political. A citizen will request governmental consideration on an issue of public interest and, in the process, come into opposition with another party’s interests (ibid). Let’s consider our cell tower example. At the zoning board meeting, you publicly asked your municipality to deny the wireless provider the permit to build its cell phone tower. Your desire – for the tower <i style="">not </i>to be built – is in direct opposition with the provider’s – for the tower to be constructed. It’s the township’s role to come to a decision. To this point, the system is functioning properly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">But when the wireless provider decided that it would be more efficacious and efficient to file the defamation suit against you, thereby attempting to interfere with your right to petition government, initiating the SLAPP suit, it also caused a number of metamorphoses to the nature of the dispute (ibid):</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 21pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">1)<span style="font: 7pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"> </span></span></span><b style="">dispute transformation</b> -<span style=""> </span>the dispute changed from being political to being legal. This is achieved by “characterizing the targets’ conduct as some technical, legalistic injury (such as libel, business interference, or conspiracy)” (ibid). </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 21pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">2)<span style="font: 7pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"> </span></span></span><b style="">forum transformation – </b>moved the dispute from the public view, where it can be seen through to resolution, to a “private judicial one (where only technicalities can be addressed)” (ibid).</p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 21pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style=""><span style="">3)<span style="font: 7pt &quot;Times New Roman&quot;;"> </span></span></span><b style="">issue transformation – </b>changed the basis of the case from potential injuries to the target (e.g. whether or not the cell tower is constructed) to harms done to filer (defamation, business interference, etc.) (ibid). </p> <p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 21pt;"> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">All of these changes are purely advantageous to the filer because, in addition to the intimidation caused by the SLAPP suit, the discussion as to what should be done vis-à-vis the matter in contention is put aside in favor of analyzing how the target may have harmed the filer. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The final stage of the SLAPP lifecycle is the most crucial. Should the target’s attorney recognize the case as an attempt to stifle constitutionally protected speech, the case will typically be dismissed (ibid). In these cases the target’s attorney has successfully retransformed the case from its private, judicial state back to its public, political existence. If the target, however, does not recognize that he is embroiled in a case meant to unconstitutionally curtail his free speech, and proceeds to engage on “the merits” of the case, he will likely “lose” – we’ll cover the definitions of “win” and “lose” vis-à-vis SLAPP suits later. In these cases, the target, by not being sensitive to the fact that a SLAPP was occurring, failed to retransform the case, and will likely pay dearly for it. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As we can see, one’s success in fending off SLAPP suits is contingent upon her recognized that she is, in fact being SLAPPed. If that doesn’t happen, the case can and will go to court, where the parties will engage on the particulars of the defamation claim. In discussing my research with friends and colleagues, the most common question about SLAPP suits is whether the filer can “win,” or if they’re ever “successful.” In the coming section, we’ll consider how the answer to this question is complicated, how a win can actually be a loss, at both the case level and at the macro level. </p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/XUSJUmkjjWY" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2010/11/metamorphoses-mechanics-of-traditional.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4322537373053963172.post-89973443855891376672010-11-13T10:56:00.002-05:002010-11-13T10:57:28.043-05:00SLAPP Suits: Origin of the Term<span style="font-style: italic;">Here's the first chunk of reasoning for my paper. If you have any comments, please do feel free to send!</span><br /><br /> <style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">Even though SLAPP suits, Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, in the American judicial system can be traced back as far as 1802 (<i style="">Harris v. Huntington</i>), just after the American Revolution, these cases were not formally identified as discrete entities until 1983, when lawyer George Pring and sociologist Penelope Canan began a groundbreaking study that culminated in their work, <i style="">SLAPPs: Getting Sued for Speaking Out </i>(1996)<i style="">.</i> </p> <p class="MsoNormal">While the definition of SLAPP suits has been broadened by subsequent legislation, the types of suits of that Pring and Canan identified in their original study have a very narrow scope. They noticed a particularly insidious subset of suits within a larger set of “intimidation suits” and tactical lawsuits. These cases, often filed by businesses against individuals or groups, attempted to use the intimidating qualities of lawsuits – cost, emotional distress, time commitment – to dissuade citizens from exercising their right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” a liberty guaranteed by the Petition Clause of the First Amendment. Further defining the scope of their study, Pring and Canan (1996) trace the evolution of a suit they would deem to be a SLAPP: “[These suits] (1) involve communications made to influence a government action or outcome, (2) which result in civil lawsuits (complaints, counterclaims, or cross-claims) (3) filed against non-governmental individuals or groups (4) on a substantive issue of some public interest or social significance” (209). </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Pring and Canan provide a wide array of examples of their conception of SLAPP suits, but I might offer a more modern example. Consider being invited to a meeting of your township’s zoning board to discuss variances to zoning policies requested by individuals and businesses in the area. One case on the docket is that of a cellular phone service provider seeking to install a prominently visible cell tower near your residence. The members of the board open the meeting up to concerns by those attending, and you vehemently exercise your right to protest the construction of the tower. Shortly after the meeting, you are served with a lawsuit, initiated by the cellular provider, accusing you of “libel” and “business interference” – the suit seeks damages of $500,000. While you’ve merely exercised your right to petition government on a matter of public interest, you will now have to shoulder the cost and inconvenience to defend that right.<span style=""> </span>And while this case may sound largely hypothetical, thousands like it have occurred since the resurgence of SLAPP suits in the 1970s (Pring &amp; Canan, 1996, xi).</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Even if you were to “win” this suit, most SLAPP suits amount to “Pyrrhic victories” (<i style="">Gordon v. Marrone, 1992) </i>that result in people “who have witnessed such suits…choos[ing] in the future to stay silent” (ibid). J. Nicholas Colabella, a New York judge, has perhaps the most cogent quote on the matter of SLAPP suits: “Short of a gun to the head, a greater threat to First Amendment expression can hardly be imagined” (ibid). </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Thanks to Pring and Canan these suits have been identified and can be dealt with accordingly, as unconstitutional attempts to curtail free speech, rather than as merited defamation suits. As we’ll come to see, the definition of these suits seems to have been broadened since their initial discovery and identification.</p><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/StazzsStuff/~4/KMVdP1I7uIE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Chris Mustazzahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13782331898209192071noreply@blogger.com0http://mustazza.blogspot.com/2010/11/slapp-suits-origin-of-term.html